Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your website into an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is publish new content on a regular basis to automatically generate more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this article, we will discuss the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured to automatically start attracting new visitors simply by adding web content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Also, the business landscape is becoming ever more competitive worldwide and businesses are researching every opportunity they can to get better results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage. Having an expertly configured website gives you a significant competitive advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to describe the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
A Semi-True Story …
Things were moving along in the widget plant when production suddenly ground to a complete stop.
No one could figure out what happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrived and, without saying a word, headed out directly to the control box. After staring silently at the control unit for less than 2 minutes or so, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny hammer and made a single tap about one inch from the right side of the box.
Immediately, everything inside the factory floor returned to normal.
The manager was filled with joy as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received a bill for $5,000.
The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay such an exorbitant fee for less than five minutes work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one in the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for having invested years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and fix a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your web site configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other web properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
While the solution to many problems often seems quite easy once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to figure things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring some basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party services you need to set up and activate to get certain outcomes
- Which options need to be configured to ensure that things will function as you have imagined, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite complicated. This is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a piece of software, tweaking some settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web server, your website or blog, and various external sites and online services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If all the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a better look at these steps.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your web-hosting account that affect how you will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your webhosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your website may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like integrating server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess and 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
Once your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step is to configure a number of third-party sites.
External Accounts
The concept behind adding external sites is that all of your content should be published from one central location (your site) and from there, be automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external services into your network, content pointing back to your site gets automatically syndicated to search, social and aggregator sites. Your website will then be given exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the third-party sites and online services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site to speed up the process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of essential information, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your account and site details with Google Webmasters are set up, you can use the account information with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details are set up, you can add traffic monitoring information to all of your pages in WordPress using plugins and send data instantly to various other useful applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account and site details are set up, this information can be used to automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts in order to integrate these with your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and drive new traffic to your site.
Set up accounts and profile pages with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are many social sites you can post your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we will review some of these tools in more detail during the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse account.
There are various sites and platforms you can add to your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services text area
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading
This section affects how your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to read the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to notify all the update services you have listed when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion Settings
Although the settings in this section are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites linked to from your content, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow your site to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways your post permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using WordPress permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that affect traffic generation
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot afford to ignore the importance of website security.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and botnets.
Go here for more information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find, classify and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with their friends and members of their social networks can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your website easily with WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website with free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social share plugins let you specify which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress – Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Other Sections To Configure
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you make money online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article about adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
Post Categories And Tags
Post categories and post tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.
(Categories help search engines better classify and index your pages, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and categories should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories you have set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A site map that lists all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites discover your site’s content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. HTML site maps are web pages that provide readers with a visual map of how your content is organized, while XML sitemaps are code that only search bots can understand. Although Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors searching for your site enter the wrong web address or click on a link pointing to an incorrect destination on your site, they are presented with a 404 Not Found error page …
(A 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do is post fresh content on a consistent basis to bring traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise required to perform this process can take some website professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as you can. This step is addressed in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section Three
To continue reading, click here:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online and drive traffic organically with a WordPress website and proven web marketing strategies.
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